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LONGFORD HAS GONE all USA and is claiming to be the only Irish town that will officially celebrate Black Friday this week.
The Longford Chamber of Commerce is teaming up with 65 local businesses to offer a range of discounts this Friday, as well as late night shopping and free parking in the town.
Black Friday traditionally happens the day after the Thanksgiving Day holiday in the US and since the early 2000s it has been seen as the beginning of the US shopping season.
Retailers offer big discounts and in recent years the day has spread outside of the USA with Irish retailers offering a big range of in-store and online discounts.
But this is the first time an entire town in Ireland has committed to celebrating the event.
Longford Chamber of Commerce and Industry CEO Lisa Brady told TheJournal.ie that the campaign was organised to show people the strength and competitiveness of Longford retailers.
“We were looking at a number of different ways of approaching the event, and felt that a one-off campaign would really pay off for the retailers.”
Brady said that Longford Town had suffered financially in the years since the recession, and that a large number of businesses had closed down in recent times.
“We’ve had an awful lot of business closures,” she said.
“There’s so much competition with the big retailers and with online shopping these days and there’s a fear that if we don’t do something for ourselves nobody is going to come in and do it for us.”
The campaign will coincide with the official turning on of the Christmas Street Lights that evening, and banks as well as retailers will stay open later than usual.
The campaign has kick-started the Longford Chamber Twitter account too, with tweets being sent out last Wednesday after two years of silence.
Black Friday / TwitterNovember 27th pic.twitter.com/Kb1GXCpXZH
— Black Friday (@longfordchambe1) November 18, 2015
A social media campaign is being organised by transition year students from the local secondary school, Scoil Mhuire.
While retailers in other towns will be offering discounts and promotions on the days, Brady said that Longford is the only town to be going all-out.
“We’re the only town that have literally every business on board,” she said.
“I know that there were other towns doing it, but not to our scale.”
The goal is get people interested in shopping in Longford, where retailers say that they can offer the same value as their big name competitors.
“Visit Longford when you get a chance,” said Brady.
“We’re not as bad as we’re purported to be.”
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Am I the only one that thinks this was over dramatised. The students could still answer the question. So what that there was 3 possible correct answers… It just means that you still had to know what you were doing(and isn’t that what the exam is for)to get a right answer.
In my opinion they make the maths papers easier every year and still complain about how many fail. I never got bonus points for siting the honors paper and without a caculator to boot. We need to overhall our methods of teaching then we can worry about the exams.
You cannot overhaul methods of teaching with the current exam in place, I dare say if the exam were different so would the teaching.
Wow, he’s really on the ball! That only took him, what….10 days?
this happens year after year start at the top wipe the lot out including mr quin. put in a team that have passed their leaving cert who can check their qus… befour they send out
Here’s a maths problem… John works in an overspending overemployed and over unionised public service sector job that oversees the production of state exam papers. There were a number of errors in the final papers handed to students and the minister in charge wants to investigate what went wrong and how it could happen. Questions: A) How many public service sector workers will it take to investigate what happened? B) How many will actually be used? C)How much extra money will it cost to discover the causes and produce a report for the minister?
Let’s scape goat some poor official trying his/her best.
The minister is responsible – why ? See below
Paper One / Higher Level (EV) English
Paper One / Higher Level (IV) Irish
Paper One: Project Maths / Higher (EV)
Paper One: Project Maths / Higher (IV)
Paper One / Foundation Level (EV)
Paper One / Foundation Level (IV)
Paper One: Project Maths/F’dation (EV)
Paper One: Project Maths /F’dation (IV)
Paper One / Ordinary Level (EV)
Paper One / Ordinary Level (IV)
Paper One: Project Maths / Ordinary
Paper One: Project Maths / Ordinary(IV)
Paper Two: Project Maths / Higher (EV)
Paper Two: Project Maths / Higher (IV)
Paper Two / Foundation Level (EV)
Paper Two / Foundation Level (IV)
Paper Two: Project Maths /F’dation(EV)
Paper Two: Project Maths / F’dation(IV)
Paper Two / Ordinary Level (EV)
Paper Two / Ordinary Level (IV)
Paper Two: Project Maths/Ordinary(EV)
Paper Two: Project Maths / Ordinary(IV)
CONFUSED YET?
Now add massive cuts in funding in education.
Add political ideology to the mix and business lead education agenda.
I’ve no idea what your point is?
Wander
Neither does the Minister, the Department or the State Examinations Commission. Thats why the whole thing is a mess.
How long did it take to type that?
Investigation will cost 10million, take 3 years and not have any discernible outcome.
Don’t see what the fuss is about ! If there were possibly three right answers then all three should be marked as correct ! Also isnt how a student approached a problem more important than a correct answer. M xx
I’d imagine that whoever set the question will be fired.
Not if they can give a correct reason three times!!
Won’t be fired if they are in the Union. Probably will be moved and retrained in setting English exam questions. First though they need at least 6 months off on sick leave due to stress.
You must be joking Roderigo. They are civil servants. Incompetence is a pre requisite.
You can’t fire a public servant no matter how bad they are at their job. They will probably get a promotion as a way to move them from the role of setting exam papers without upsetting the union
Simon. Yes I actually was joking. Maybe a pay cut would be more appropriate!
“You can’t fire a public servant no matter how bad they are at their job”.
Yes you can. Ask any doctor or nurse.
Make other public servants legally responsible for their actions. You’d solve a lotta problems very quickly.
Like Quinn himself …. a mistake.
Like Gilmore …..another mistake.
Like Howlin…..yet another mistake !
Sack them too .
Shatter ……big mistake.
Hogan……..big mistake.
Reilly ………big mistake.
Yet nobody taking responsibility for any of those mistakes !
Rodigo, the exam was not set wrong, the mistake was made in the production/typing of the paper. As I’m sure you are aware the mistake was on the English version but the Irish version was correct.
Peter
Imagine how much better Ireland would be if condoms had been available when those mistakes were being made!
How ironic that I managed to do better in applied maths than maths! thats project maths for ya!
Poor public servants + terrible minister = examination cock ups.
Now that’s math!!
Questions were asked that aren’t on the new course!? There is so much confusion over what students actually need to know walking into their project maths exam. There’s all this stuff about different ‘phases’ of new course and the different textbooks and extra material not in the books make it impossible to follow. It seems the people writing the papers don’t really know what’s on the course either.
3 billion cant add yet gets the big job . Leaving cert mistake or down right count care less or are they looking for the big job
have your say